Tristes Tropiques

The author was one of the great anthropologists of the 20th century. He started out studying philosophy between the wars and was heavily influenced by Marx and Freud. His theory of structualism seems, at least superficially, to be a Marxist or Hegelian view of society. Structuralism is not really discussed or explained in this book, and that is probably why it is his most popular. I've read that he cobbled Tristes Tropiques together from other published magazine articles, travelogues and his notes. The book does read that way, but some of it, perhaps much of it, is quite fascinating. I found the central part of the book about his time with the Nambikwara and Tupi-Kawahib tribes in Brazil to be the most straight forward and interesting. Other extraneous chapters include a detailed summary of a play that was never published, an account of a trip to a Pakistani archeological site and a great description of his escape from Vichy France to Mozambique.